In a computer room including various units acting as heat generating sources, such as a computer, display monitor, printer, magnetic recorder, and communication controller, it is necessary to perform air conditioning in order to keep the optimum operation environment and working environment. To air-condition a computer room, one or more air conditioners are generally used for supplying cooling air and manually controlling the airflow rate(s) and airflow direction(s) of the air conditioner(s) on the basis of temperatures detected by temperature sensors provided at selected positions in the room.
However, the above manual method is not suitable for an unattended computer room. Moreover, flows of the cooling air in a computer room are delicately changed depending on the number, dimensions, and arrangement state of units, such as computers and peripheral units (hereafter referred to as computer system units). Furthermore, the heat generated depends on not only a unit but also an operation state such as a high-speed operation or low-speed operation.
As a result, temperature distributions in a computer room can always be changed. Particularly, stagnancy of a high temperature occurs in a relatively narrow region and the stagnancy almost unexpectedly moves. Moreover, when supplying cooling air toward a certain high-temperature region, other areas may become high-temperature. Therefore, in fact, it is not easy to quickly uniform the temperature distribution in a computer room and keep the state. Therefore, there is a need for an automatic control technique for quickly responding to the fluctuation of temperature distribution in a computer room, properly controlling a temperature, and keeping an optimum temperature state.
Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide an air conditioning system capable of effectively controlling air-conditioning of a room requiring cooling. It is another object of the present invention to provide an air conditioning system and method for effectively achieving air conditioning of a room including computer system units.